No, this is not the end time

I am surprised that no man of God on the fringes of lunacy has yet told us that the new global health challenge that goes by the rather sonorous name of coronavirus is the latest evidence that the end time has at last arrived. Were that so, there would be an obvious threat of over population […]

I am surprised that no man of God on the fringes of lunacy has yet told us that the new global health challenge that goes by the rather sonorous name of coronavirus is the latest evidence that the end time has at last arrived. Were that so, there would be an obvious threat of over population in heaven and hell. And, to be the sure, the earth would be left empty.

Were that so, spare a thought for our politicians, men and women with the pronounced swagger of self and social importance. The bill for immunity for the principal officers of the national assembly would suddenly end its life in the second reading stage in the senate. But try not to lose your sleep, brother. This is not the end time. It is just a new health challenge we must face and conquer to keep God’s earth filled in obedience to the divine injunction.

Staying alive has been mankind’s greatest challenge since the world was repopulated with the creatures that Noah saved in the ark from the devastating flood. It is impossible for us to imagine the health challenges that mankind has had to face through all the millennia. The plague, also known as the black death, depopulated Europe. Small pox sent millions into their graves throughout the world. Leprosy refuses to bow out. So does malaria that has killed millions of people because mosquitoes, the intrepid carriers of the disease, refuse to submit to insecticides.

We thought that HIV/AIDS, the health challenge that moderated the inclination of men to sow wild oaths with reckless abandon, was the alarum for the end time. It was not – and happily so. We were told then by those who claim to know the divine mind that the disease was sent to the world precisely to punish us for our many sins, not excluding, I suppose, corruption – financial, political and moral – in the corruption of the world. It was nonsense, of course.

In the last decade or two, the world has had to contend with various new health challenges from almost every angle – Acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome, an impressive name for AIDS, Avian flu, also known as H7N9, Chikungunya (I thought it was an Ibo name), Dengue fever, Ebola, H1N1 flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Severe acute respiratory syndrome, Zika virus and the latest so far generating global panic and fear, Coronavirus. Africa has been blamed for many of these diseases. Ebola frightened us off bush meat. The latest is a Chinese export. This is happening at the time that that country has virtually become the business capital of the world.

China took immediate steps to contain it. It performed a near miracle when, in response to the outbreak of the virus, it constructed a 1,000-bed hospital in only ten days. Nigeria, you can be sure, could not construct a 10-bed hospital in one year should it be faced with a similar challenge. There is a lot of motion to show that our country has joined the global race to contain the coronavirus and save us from becoming victims to this dangerous Chinese health export.

Still, I can see no evidence of a co-ordinated and measured response to coronavirus in our country. The federal and the state governments are responding to it each in its own way. Indeed, states that have had no Chinese visitors or returnees, appear totally somnolent about it. The Nigerian public remains almost totally ignorant of coronavirus because our health officials do not think it is important to educate us. No one has told us what to do when we suspect that the fever someone is suffering from might be anything but simple fever. Is the face mask a good preventive measure? What does it do for the wearer? We do not know the right answers to these questions. We only know that the rest of the world is donning the face mask. It now looks like a new global fashion statement and evidence of personal initiative to save oneself. There is a roaring face mask business already because the exploitation of misery is smart business.

I have always feared that our capacity to reasonably respond to a pandemic like this is effectively impaired by our lack of preparedness for almost any such challenges. Our health delivery system is in shambles. It is no news to our leaders. It does not bother them that much because they and their families can afford to take their health problems to India in what is euphemistically known as medical tourism. The sick would be the last person to embark on tourism to India. This then leaves the poor to bear the brunt of our national failures. A thousand pities.

The health experts I checked this up with told me that the real challenge posed by coronavirus is that it is a new virus and as such, it has no known treatment – no drugs and no vaccines. It is also an opportunistic disease. If an infected person has another serious health problem, the virus could take advantage of this to worsen his health problem. This, I was told, is bad for old people. You need not say that again.

But while we are engaged in a feverish motion with little chance of real movement, the rest of the world has taken up the battle cry to contain and eventually defeat this latest global health challenge. Scientists have hunkered down in their labs seeking answers to relevant questions to enable them develop drugs and vaccines that would arm health providers with the weapons of war against coronavirus. The World Bank has voted $12 billion to aid the researches and fight the scourge. That handsome vote is a clear evidence that the rest of the world is not sitting on its haunches. This pandemic has the capacity to possibly lay God’s beautiful earth to waste.

Mankind is running a tough obstacle race against coronavirus. It is a race it must win. Should Nigeria pray? It is the stock response of a nation consumed with religiosity sans religion.